Nigel Dodd argues in The Social Life of Bitcoin that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control.[131] Dodd quotes a YouTube video, with Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Charlie Shrem, Andreas Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood, Trace Meyer and other proponents of bitcoin reading The Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence. The declaration includes a message of crypto-anarchism with the words: "Bitcoin is inherently anti-establishment, anti-system, and anti-state. Bitcoin undermines governments and disrupts institutions because bitcoin is fundamentally humanitarian."[131][130]

A wallet stores the information necessary to transact bitcoins. While wallets are often described as a place to hold[93] or store bitcoins, due to the nature of the system, bitcoins are inseparable from the blockchain transaction ledger. A wallet is more correctly defined as something that "stores the digital credentials for your bitcoin holdings" and allows one to access (and spend) them.[7]:ch. 1, glossary Bitcoin uses public-key cryptography, in which two cryptographic keys, one public and one private, are generated.[94] At its most basic, a wallet is a collection of these keys.

It takes a (global) village to raise a blockchain. The live network and the community of open source developers contribute significantly to this effort. They continuously refine and harden the Ethereum platform, helping it get faster at responding to industry demands for the value propositions it offers. These investments of time and resources speak to their faith in Ethereum governance and the value that businesses and developers see in its capabilities. – Joseph Lubin, CEO of Consensys
طرح شخص أطلق على نفسه الاسم الرمزي ساتوشي ناكاموتو فكرة بيتكوين للمرة الأولى في ورقة بحثية في عام 2008،[2] ووصفها بأنها نظام نقدي إلكتروني يعتمد في التعاملات المالية على مبدأ الند للند (بالإنجليزية: Peer-to-Peer) ، وهو مصطلح تقني يعني التعامل المباشر بين مستخدم وآخر دون وجود وسيط (كالتورنت). يقول القائمون على بيتكوين إن الهدف من هذه العملة التي طرحت للتداول للمرة الأولى سنة 2009 [3] هو تغيير الاقتصاد العالمي بنفس الطريقة التي غيرت بها الويب أساليب النشر.[4] وفي عام 2016 أعلن رجل الأعمال الأسترالي كريغ رايت أنه هو ساتوشي ناكاموتو مقدما دليلا تقنيا على ذلك ولكن تم كشف زيف أدلّته بسهولة.[5] Ethereum has recently created a new standard called the ERC721 token for tracking unique digital assets. One of the biggest use cases currently for such tokens is digital collectibles, as the infrastructure allows for people to prove ownership of scarce digital goods. Many games are currently being built using this technology, such as the overnight hit CryptoKitties, a game where you can collect and breed digital cats. سعر البيتكوين غير مستقر ومن المُحتمل جدا أنك سمعت بأخبار تجاوز بيتكوين لحاجز 11000 دولار صعودا أو نزولا. هناك من يعتقد بأن هذا السعر مُبالغ فيه، لكن هناك كثيرون يعتقدون بأنه سعر لا يُعطي للبيتكوين حقه. من بين الأسباب التي تدفع إلى اعتقاد ذلك هو كون البيتكوين سلعة تحتاج إلى قدر كبير من الكهرباء لإنتاجها ويُفترض أن يكون سعرها على الأقل مُقاربا لسعر الكهرباء التي تم استهلاكها لإنتاجها أو أعلى بقليل بحكم قيام المُنقبين بدور حيوي لشبكة بيتكوين، وبالتالي يجب أن يكون هناك ما يدفعهم للقيام ذلك. بإمكاننا معرفة ما يربحه المنقبون من العمليات التي يقومون بها بشكل دقيق، حيث هناك مواقع تنشر هذه الإحصائيات جاهزة، لكن يُمكن التحقق من ذلك عبر تحليل سجل حسابات بيتكوين أيضا. لدى كتابة هذه السطور استطاع المُنقبون تحقيق $3,925,863 خلال الساعات الـ24 الماضية، قد يبدو هذا المبلغ ضخما، لكن القيام بعمليات التنقيب تلك احتاجت إلى 11,388,578 جيجا هاش /الثانية وهو أيضا رقم كبير جدا ويحتاج إلى قدر ضخم من الكهرباء للقيام بذلك. ليس من السهل معرفة تكلفة القيام بذلك لكن يُمكن القيام ببعض الحسابات التي ستعطينها فهما تقريبيا للوضع.
If the private key is lost, the bitcoin network will not recognize any other evidence of ownership;[32] the coins are then unusable, and effectively lost. For example, in 2013 one user claimed to have lost 7,500 bitcoins, worth $7.5 million at the time, when he accidentally discarded a hard drive containing his private key.[78] About 20% of all bitcoins are believed to be lost. They would have a market value of about $20 billion at July 2018 prices.[79]
Ethereum enables developers to build and deploy decentralized applications. A decentralized application or Dapp serve some particular purpose to its users. Bitcoin, for example, is a Dapp that provides its users with a peer to peer electronic cash system that enables online Bitcoin payments. Because decentralized applications are made up of code that runs on a blockchain network, they are not controlled by any individual or central entity. Ethereum has recently created a new standard called the ERC721 token for tracking unique digital assets. One of the biggest use cases currently for such tokens is digital collectibles, as the infrastructure allows for people to prove ownership of scarce digital goods. Many games are currently being built using this technology, such as the overnight hit CryptoKitties, a game where you can collect and breed digital cats. Computing power is often bundled together or "pooled" to reduce variance in miner income. Individual mining rigs often have to wait for long periods to confirm a block of transactions and receive payment. In a pool, all participating miners get paid every time a participating server solves a block. This payment depends on the amount of work an individual miner contributed to help find that block.[92]

The successful miner finding the new block is allowed by the rest of the network to reward themselves with newly created bitcoins and transaction fees.[88] As of 9 July 2016,[89] the reward amounted to 12.5 newly created bitcoins per block added to the blockchain, plus any transaction fees from payments processed by the block. To claim the reward, a special transaction called a coinbase is included with the processed payments.[7]:ch. 8 All bitcoins in existence have been created in such coinbase transactions. The bitcoin protocol specifies that the reward for adding a block will be halved every 210,000 blocks (approximately every four years). Eventually, the reward will decrease to zero, and the limit of 21 million bitcoins[f] will be reached c. 2140; the record keeping will then be rewarded solely by transaction fees.[90]

• وسائل الحصول على عُملات البيتكوين: بُناء عى حكم الفتوى رقم: 231460 لدار الإفتاء، أكدت إنه إذا كان الحصول على هذه العُملات الإفتراضية مثل عمليات التعدين والتنقيب يتم بشكل سليم بعيد عن التلاعب والغش والسرقة والنصب، فيجوز إدراجها تحت بنود العُملات المُحللة. ولكن بشرط التقابض وهو ما يحدث مع تداول عُملات البيتكوين، كما أن الإستثمارات الناتجة من أرباح عمليات بيع وشراء البيتكوين من ضمن الأسباب التى تثبت تحليل عملات البيتكوين، حيث إنه إذا كُنت شخص سليم النية ستقوم بإستثمار أرباحك بما يُرضى الله ولأن الله أعلم بالنوايا ستُحتسب في ميزان حسناتك.
According to The New York Times, libertarians and anarchists were attracted to the idea. Early bitcoin supporter Roger Ver said: "At first, almost everyone who got involved did so for philosophical reasons. We saw bitcoin as a great idea, as a way to separate money from the state."[126] The Economist describes bitcoin as "a techno-anarchist project to create an online version of cash, a way for people to transact without the possibility of interference from malicious governments or banks".[129]
Nigel Dodd argues in The Social Life of Bitcoin that the essence of the bitcoin ideology is to remove money from social, as well as governmental, control.[131] Dodd quotes a YouTube video, with Roger Ver, Jeff Berwick, Charlie Shrem, Andreas Antonopoulos, Gavin Wood, Trace Meyer and other proponents of bitcoin reading The Declaration of Bitcoin's Independence. The declaration includes a message of crypto-anarchism with the words: "Bitcoin is inherently anti-establishment, anti-system, and anti-state. Bitcoin undermines governments and disrupts institutions because bitcoin is fundamentally humanitarian."[131][130] As the industry continues to investigate blockchain platforms, it’s apparent that Ethereum is becoming a de facto leader. For example, a few days ago JPMorgan publicly open-sourced its Quorum platform, architected and developed around the Go Ethereum client by Jeff Wilcke and his team. Several other major banks are using Ethereum, and Microsoft is anchoring its Bletchley platform on it as the foundational blockchain element. Industry, both publicly and confidentially, continues to contribute to Ethereum and work with us and others to help our promising, toddler-age codebase reach maturity. Stay tuned for news on this front. The bitcoin blockchain is a public ledger that records bitcoin transactions.[75] It is implemented as a chain of blocks, each block containing a hash of the previous block up to the genesis block[c] of the chain. A network of communicating nodes running bitcoin software maintains the blockchain.[32]:215–219 Transactions of the form payer X sends Y bitcoins to payee Z are broadcast to this network using readily available software applications.

It takes a (global) village to raise a blockchain. The live network and the community of open source developers contribute significantly to this effort. They continuously refine and harden the Ethereum platform, helping it get faster at responding to industry demands for the value propositions it offers. These investments of time and resources speak to their faith in Ethereum governance and the value that businesses and developers see in its capabilities. – Joseph Lubin, CEO of Consensys

Physical wallets can also take the form of metal token coins[102] with a private key accessible under a security hologram in a recess struck on the reverse side.[103]:38 The security hologram self-destructs when removed from the token, showing that the private key has been accessed.[104] Originally, these tokens were struck in brass and other base metals, but later used precious metals as bitcoin grew in value and popularity.[103]:80 Coins with stored face value as high as ₿1000 have been struck in gold.[103]:102–104 The British Museum's coin collection includes four specimens from the earliest series[103]:83 of funded bitcoin tokens; one is currently on display in the museum's money gallery.[105] In 2013, a Utahn manufacturer of these tokens was ordered by the Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN) to register as a money services business before producing any more funded bitcoin tokens.[102][103]:80 The use of bitcoin by criminals has attracted the attention of financial regulators, legislative bodies, law enforcement, and the media.[218] In the United States, the FBI prepared an intelligence assessment,[219] the SEC issued a pointed warning about investment schemes using virtual currencies,[218] and the U.S. Senate held a hearing on virtual currencies in November 2013.[220] The U.S. government claimed that bitcoin was used to facilitate payments related to Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections.[221] Several news outlets have asserted that the popularity of bitcoins hinges on the ability to use them to purchase illegal goods.[135][222] Nobel-prize winning economist Joseph Stiglitz says that bitcoin's anonymity encourages money laundering and other crimes, "If you open up a hole like bitcoin, then all the nefarious activity will go through that hole, and no government can allow that." He's also said that if "you regulate it so you couldn't engage in money laundering and all these other [crimes], there will be no demand for Bitcoin. By regulating the abuses, you are going to regulate it out of existence. It exists because of the abuses."[223][224]
Ether is a token whose blockchain is generated by the Ethereum platform. Ether can be transferred between accounts and used to compensate participant mining nodes for computations performed.[3] Ethereum provides a decentralized virtual machine, the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), which can execute scripts using an international network of public nodes.[4] The virtual machine's instruction set, in contrast to others like Bitcoin Script, is thought to be Turing-complete. "Gas", an internal transaction pricing mechanism, is used to mitigate spam and allocate resources on the network.[4] Bitcoin is a digital asset designed to work in peer-to-peer transactions as a currency.[4][135] Bitcoins have three qualities useful in a currency, according to The Economist in January 2015: they are "hard to earn, limited in supply and easy to verify."[136] Per some researchers, as of 2015, bitcoin functions more as a payment system than as a currency.[32]